Biojewelry allows two persons to undergo a biopsy, in which each of them has a sample of their bone cells removed. The tissue is harvested in a lab, grown until a mass of bone has developed and used as a material for a ring. The rings can then be exchanged as a symbol of their relationship.

Monday, 28 March 2005

how often we are straight-jacketed into reality tunnels both of our own making and those imposed on us by EXPERTS.

In many ways we have made little progress from the days of the Holy Spanish Inquisition; on TV, Radio, Magazines, Newspapers, from the halls of Academia and the halls of religous institutions to the halls of Congress, we are showered, bombarded and pressured to THINK a certain way...and woe to those who preach heresy.

a network of scholars elaborating the law, policy and ethics of freedom of thought. Our mission is to develop social policies that will preserve and enhance freedom of thought into the 21st century.

Our guiding principles are privacy, autonomy and choice:

Privacy: What and how you think should be private unless you choose to share it.

Autonomy: Self-determination over one’s own cognition is central to free will.

Choice: The capabilities of the human mind should not be limited. So long as people do not directly harm others, governments should not criminally prohibit cognitive enhancement or the experience of any mental state.

"The reputation of United Nations peacekeeping missions suffered a humiliating blow yesterday as an internal report identified repeated patterns of sexual abuse and rape perpetrated by soldiers supposed to be restoring the international rule of law...."

The embarrassment caused by the misconduct of UN forces in devastated communities around the world - including Haiti, Sierra Leone, Bosnia, Cambodia , East Timor and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) - has become an increasingly high profile, political problem.

Allegations have recently surfaced that troops sent to police Liberia were regularly having sex with girls aged as young as 12, sometimes in the mission's administrative buildings.

In the DRC, peacekeepers were said to have offered abandoned orphans small gifts - as little as two eggs from their rations, says the report - for sexual encounters.

Alarm about the involvement of UN peacekeepers in sex trafficking first became widespread during the 1990s when investigators found soldiers were customers in brothels run in Bosnia and Kosovo which relied on women sold into forced prostitution.

Entitled A Comprehensive Strategy To Eliminate Future Sexual Exploitation and Abuse in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations, the document insists that UN interventions operate on the principle that they will not "in any way increase the suffering of vulnerable sectors of [a] population".

People in the crowd say that a number of balloons were burst as the Queen arrived...

...Police said two youths, aged 17, were being held on suspicion of threatening behaviour after apparently bursting balloons outside the cathedral...

...Afterwards, the Queen was joined by the Duke of Edinburgh for a 20-minute walkabout.

archive...

the British royal family changed their last name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917. The reason? World War One broke out in 1914 and anti-German sentiment was at its height in 1917. So King George V renounced all the German titles belonging to him and his family and adopted the name of his castle, Windsor.

Five hundred websites - many of them with an Arab or Muslim connection - crashed last Wednesday (sept 5th 2001) when an anti-terrorism taskforce raided InfoCom Corporation in Texas.

The 80-strong taskforce that descended upon the IT company included FBI agents, Secret Service agents, Diplomatic Security agents, tax inspectors, immigration officials, customs officials, department of commerce officials and computer experts.

Three days later, they were still busy inside the building, reportedly copying every hard disc they could find. InfoCom hosts websites for numerous clients in the Middle East, including al-Jazeera (the satellite TV station), al-Sharq (a daily newspaper in Qatar), and Birzeit (the Palestinian university on the West Bank).

It also hosts sites for several Muslim organisations in the United States, among them the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Students Association, the Islamic Association for Palestine, and the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

In addition, InfoCom is the registered owner of ".iq" - the internet country code for Iraq.

Wednesday, 23 March 2005

"I propose that every Republican politician be asked this simple question: Do you believe that the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago? ... They'll have two choices. First, they can acknowledge the truth, and offend their most rabid supporters. Or they can say they do in fact believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in which case they will have proclaimed for all to see their antipathy toward the very notions of science and rationality.

Or they might take a third path – trying not to answer the question. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with that.... We absolutely need to get politicians on the record on this...."

meanwhile...

new york times, March 19, 2005 Several american Imax theaters, including some in science museums, are refusing to show movies that mention evolution - or the Big Bang or the geology of the earth - fearing protests from people who object to films that contradict biblical descriptions of the origin of Earth and its creatures.

The number of theaters rejecting such films is small, people in the industry say - perhaps a dozen or fewer, most in the South. But because only a few dozen Imax theaters routinely show science documentaries, the decisions of a few can have a big impact on a film's bottom line - or a producer's decision to make a documentary in the first place.

The executive jet with the tail number N379P (N8068V) is a US Department of Defence prisoner transport, also known as "Guantanámo Bay Express". The craft transports people to undisclosed locations for Ultra Rendition, i.e., delivery of detainees to be tortured in foreign locations renowned for their poor human rights records.

"to stop the pain you will tell them anything they want to hear. anything."

Robert Baer, a CIA case officer in the Middle East until 1997, told us how it works. "We pick up a suspect or we arrange for one of our partner countries to do it. Then the suspect is placed on civilian transport to a third country where, let's make no bones about it, they use torture. If you want a good interrogation, you send someone to Jordan. If you want them to be killed, you send them to Egypt or Syria. Either way, the US cannot be blamed as it is not doing the heavy work."

The floating population of "ghost detainees", according to US and UK military officials, now exceeds 10,000.

Analysis of the plane's flight plans, covering more than two years, shows that it always departs from Washington DC. It has flown to 49 destinations outside America, including the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba and other US military bases, as well as Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Afghanistan, Libya and Uzbekistan.

Nigel Rodley, a former UN special rapporteur on torture, said, "The more hidden detention practices there are, the more likely that all legal and moral constraints on official behaviour will be removed."

N379P was originaly N581GA. It became N379P in 2000 when it was aquired by Premier Executive Transport Serviceslater in December 2003 it became N8068V. And in Dec 1 2004 it was renamed N44982 and ownership was transfered to -Bayard Foreign Marketing of Portland, Ore

The FBI and other U.S. agencies ignored the murky pasts of alleged Nazi collaborators living in the United States because the government saw them as useful during the Cold War, according to newly released records.

The government saw Nazi sympathizers as useful in countering any pro-communist leanings in immigrant communities in the United States, and the CIA and other agencies sometimes thwarted immigration authorities from beginning deportation proceedings, the records show.

In the thousands of files released, the CIA is also shown seeking the Immigration and Naturalization Service's help in easing travel in and out of America for Mykola Lebed, a Ukrainian accused of aiding German storm troopers in brutal suppression of local resistance during World War II.

Nazi minions, Arthur Rudolph and Werner Von Braun, provided the know-how to put American astronauts on the moon and nuclear warheads into space.

from 1939 to 1942, Ford Motor Company produced thousands of combat vehicles for the Nazis at its Cologne, Germany production facility. During the height of WWII, Ford shipped raw materials from America to the Cologne plant to ensure that production would not be interrupted by Allied bombing and that Hitler would remain a happy customer. According to Ken Silverstein, Ford vehicles were crucial to the revolutionary Nazi military strategy of blitzkrieg. Of the 350,000 trucks used by the motorized German Army as of 1942, roughly one-third were Ford products

IBM received lucrative contracts from the Nazis. Profits from those efforts, like Ford's were sent home to America to perform research and development for new profit-making technologies. It's the same story for General Motors, Kodak, Dupont, and General Electric (owner of NBC news).

and not forgetting that grandpa Prescott Bush, along with partner E. Ronald Harriman, supplied financial aid and raw materials to Hitler's Third Reich.

"Hitler's Germany amalgamated state with church. It was a real Christian country whose citizens were indoctrinated by both state and church and blindly followed all authority figures, political and ecclesiastical. Mein Kampf is chock full of the Fuhrer's musings on God.

Hitler, like some of today's politicians and preachers, politicized "family values." He liked corporeal punishment in home and school. Jesus prayers became mandatory in all schools under his administration. While abortion was illegal in pre-Hitler Germany, he took it to new depths of enforcement, requiring all doctors to report to the government the circumstances of all miscarriages. He openly despised homosexuality and criminalized it."

Christianity has been used to justify everything from the Salem witch trials to slavery in America, and it facilitated group-think in Germany -- when individuality and questions of conscience were needed the most.

"A society whose citizens refuse to see and investigate the facts, who refuse to believe that their govt and their media will routinely lie to them and fabricate a reality contrary to verifiable facts, is a society that chooses and deserves the Police State Dictatorship it's going to get." (...ian goddard)

also...

Hitler himself often expressed his admiration for the expediency in which the American Christians removed the Native Americans and gave them mass graves like the one in Wounded Knee, South Dakota.

General Tommy Franks... "this grand experiment that we call democracy, could be scrapped in favor of a military form of government ....for our own good." Citing the blanket-spectre of "terrorist threats," he reasoned that the U.S. would need to come under lockdown and Total Control via the U.S. military

the Scottish church said it "had never regarded the fact that someone was in a close relationship with a member of the same sex as in itself constituting a bar to the exercise of an ordained ministry".

The statement is in contrast to the Church of England, which will only ordain homosexuals not in a physical relationship. The Anglican Communion worldwide is arguing over the consecration of a US bishop. Anglican leaders have criticised the US Episcopal Church over the consecration of Gene Robinson and the Anglican Church of Canada for its blessing of same sex unions, demanding they withdraw from the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) for three years.

But the Scottish bishops said: "We are conscious that as a church we are much indebted in our life both to a significant presence of persons of homosexual orientation, and also those whose theology and stance would be critical of attitudes to sexuality other than abstinence outside marriage.

Bishop of San Diego Robert Brom has apologised after refusing to allow John McCusker, a gay nightclub owner, to have his funeral service in a San Diego church. Mr McCusker's mother read out Bishop Brom's apology.

"I deeply regret that denying a Catholic funeral for John McCusker at the Immaculata has resulted in his unjust condemnation, and I apologise to the family for the anguish this has caused them," he wrote.

Mr McCusker had originally been denied a Catholic funeral at any church within the bishop's diocese because of the church's wish to "avoid a public scandal". Issuing the ban, Bishop Brom had originally released a statement saying Mr McCusker's "business activities... were contrary to sacred scripture and the moral teaching of the church".

Tuesday, 22 March 2005

Daniel Robert Epstein:... You've spoken quite openly about the drugs you've done over the years. I had a teacher years ago that was also a priest and we had an argument over drugs. He said that the same feelings you can reach with drugs you can get to naturally with meditation.

Grant Morrison: ...That's not true but I do understand what he's trying to say. Theoretically, you can recreate all states of consciousness just by thinking about them but having tried both meditation and drugs and often both at the same time I'm not sure about this one. It's a bit like saying you can recreate the feeling of a Thanksgiving Dinner using meditation. Maybe you could but why would you? Meditation can take you to some places that some drugs can also take you too but I don't believe meditation can reproduce a full-on acid experience or a high dose mushroom or DMT trip, nor would it be helpful if it did. It can reproduce something like an ecstasy experience. Meditators who claim they can recreate all of these drug states are probably either unfamiliar with the drugs or they're being slightly disingenuous about the whole issue.

Daniel Robert Epstein:... You mentioned three drugs right there, when you did Animal Man was it from doing one drug and was The Invisibles with another drug and etc?

Grant Morrison: ... The weird thing with me is that I'm into magic more than I am drugs and I started my psychedelic experiments very late, as an adjunct to my magical work. I ate a little bit of hash when I was 24 and I had some mushrooms when I was 28 but otherwise I was totally straight edge until I was 31. I was in a psychedelic punk band where we didn't drink, smoke or take drugs! I only got into drugs when I felt sorted emotionally enough to deal with the effects and I had good magical reasons for doing so. Then in 90's I joined the rave party and spent every single day of the decade getting totally wrecked on mind-altering substances which, I have to admit, I enjoyed immensely. I was never keen on stimulants like cocaine and speed because they did nothing useful or interesting for me but I loved the psychedelic drugs which could twist my head, erase my name and address, open up my subconscious and turn my brain into a super-conductor, so I dosed like a madman for ten years, studied the effects and wrote it all down in The Invisibles and Flex Mentallo in particular. Zenith, Animal Man and Arkham Asylum are pretty straight edge and Doom Patrol shows the influence of shrooms from around the time of those Insect Mesh issues but I was mostly doing it straight. The 90’s work emerged from the cockpit of a rocket-driven rollercoaster of LSD, cannabis, mushrooms, DMT, 2CB, ecstasy and champagne.

The Uncanny Valley is a principle of robotics concerning the emotional response of humans to robots and other non-human entities.

It was theorized by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in the late 1970s through psychological experiments in which he measured human response to robots of varying degrees of anthropomorphism. This principle states that as a robot is made more humanlike in its appearance and motion the emotional response from a human being to robot will become increasingly positive and empathetic, until a point is reached at which the response suddenly becomes strongly repulsive.

This gap of repulsive response aroused by a robot with appearance and motion between a "barely-human" and "fully human" entity is called the Uncanny Valley.

Thenceforth, as the appearance and motion are made to be indistinguishable to that of human being, the emotional response becomes positive once more and approaches human-human empathy levels.

The phenomenon can be explained by the notion that if an entity is sufficiently non-humanlike, then the humanlike characteristics will tend to stand out and be noticed easily, generating empathy. On the other hand, if the entity is "almost human", then the non-human characteristics will be the ones that stand out, leading to a feeling of "strangeness" in the human viewer.

Some roboticists have heavily criticized the theory. David Hanson, a roboticist who developed a realistic robotic copy of his girlfriend's head, called the idea of the Uncanny Valley pseudoscientific.

Although originally resulting from experimental data and applied only to robotics, the Uncanny Valley principle has been applied to computer animation characters. An example of the Uncanny Valley was seen in late 2004, with the close release of two CG-animated films, The Incredibles and The Polar Express. Many critics preferred the deliberately stylised appearance of the characters in The Incredibles to the human-like characters in The Polar Express (which were described by many critics as being "disturbing").

Some of the expo's must-sees include Japan's much talked about robotic technology.

On top of the 3,000 police personnel, mingling among the crowds will be eight security robots. Not only are they programmed to detect suspicious objects as they patrol the premises by night, they can also play tour guide by day.

Apart from its security robot contingent, visitors can also get up front and friendly with other robots.

One robot for example, cleans up where you mess up and another is able to talk to you in four languages.

How about a robotic receptionist who looks human and welcomes you with a smile?

And for entertainment, you have a full band of robots playing musical instruments.

Then there is an amazing robot which can carry a person. It was invented by Japan's top automaker, Toyota Motor, with a practical aim. Said Soya Takagi, general manager, production engineering development at Toyota, "We've developed robots with these functions so they can support the elderly and the disabled, as a way to nurse or just to help them."

A robot week is expected to be set up from June 9 to 19. During that period, if you visit this site, you'll be able to enjoy the company of 65 varieties of robots.

"Are you saving yourself for your wedding night? The Devil wants you to fail, that’s why he puts stumbling blocks in your way. But God wants you to succeed, and that’s why he has given us anal sex as an alternative to intercourse before marriage. Through anal sex, you can satisfy your body’s needs, while you avoid the risk of unwanted pregnancy and still keep yourself pure for marriage...."

....it's wise to be suspicious of opinion polls. there was the one which got soldiers to say they were against homosexuals by asking loaded questions such as "do you agree that all homosexual acts are perverted" along with recording each respondent's identity.

... "what actors do, in their work, is the opposite of living; they are people who make their money from standing where they are told to and reciting words that others have written...... they work in order to make us believe in a fantasy persona, they can slip into a falsehood like a well-worn sea-boot....... so for us to be interested in their lives and their views on life has some profound root, way below the topsoil of rationality....."

"it is easy to lose track of the basic truth, which is that everything in modern life that is not rubbish tends to be dangerous, and that all this confused and bemused generation wants is the available information about the size of the risks."

"the bbc was forced to apologise about thursday's broadcast of question time, in which muslim contributors suggested that the attacks arose because the US was hated around the world."

(while the causes and perpetrators of september 11th are still a debatable issue.... it remains a basic truth that america IS hated around the world, and any citizen of any so-called democracy has the right to voice it publicly and unapologetically)

Akuaba, Coyote, Ganesh, The Venus of Laussel and many more. Chocolate Deities are Fine Quality Gourmet Handmade Chocolate that celebrate those gods and goddesses of love and luxury, joy and happiness, compassion, peace and serenity, healing, and fertility of the body and imagination.

The Nephilim were a race of giants. The origination of the Nephilim begins with a story of the fallen angels. Shemhazai, an angel of high rank, led a sect of angels in a descent to earth to instruct humans in righteousness. The tutelage went on for a few centuries, but soon the angels pined for the human females. After lusting, the fallen angels instructed the women in magic and conjuring, mated with them, and produced hybrid offspring: the Nephilim.

God instructed the angel Gabriel to ignite a civil war among the Nephilim. He also chose Enoch, a righteous man, to inform the fallen angels of the judgment pronounced on them and their children. God did not allow the fallen angels any peace, for they could not lift their eyes to heaven and were later to be chained. The end of the Nephilim came about in the war incited by Gabriel, in which the giants eventually annihilated each other.

Bingu wa Mutharika, the 71 year old president of malawi, has asked clergymen to pray to exorcise evil spirits from his 300 bedroom state mansion.

"we have asked for divine intervention to cast the blood of jesus against any evil plots against the president."

also...

"murdering gay lovers executed"

2 men were executed for beating to death a man in order to prevent him from exposing their gay relationship. homosexuality is a criminal offence in saudi arabia.

AND...

"nice guy kills 7 at church"

"described by a neighbour as the nicest guy in the world, terry ratzmann, 44, massacred 7 people at the Living Church of God, where he worshipped. ........eco-friendly terry was an avid gardner who grew and gave vegetables to friends"

I watch none. He (george snr) sits and listens and I read books, because I know perfectly well that, don't take offense, that 90 percent of what I hear on television is supposition, when we're talking about the news. And he's not, not as understanding of my pettiness about that. But why should we hear about body bags, and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that. And watch him suffer.

archive...

"we must win this culture war" the republican senator sam brownback told a private Family, Faith and Freedom rally in new york. for many this is the central task of a second term.(guardian sept 4 2004)

finally, let us return to another of the illicit loves of ZEUS: the Trojan shepherd boy GANYMEDE, said to be the most beautiful boy alive. One day ZEUS caught sight of GANYMEDE watching over his flocks, and was smitten with him.

Adopting the form of an eagle, ZEUS swooped down on the youth, snatching him up in his claws.

ZEUS transported him up to OLYMPUS where he kept GANYMEDE as his personal wine waiter and catamite. in fact the word catamite comes from a Latin mis-translation of the Greek name GANYMEDE.

among the stars, GANYMEDE is represented by the constellation Aquarius.